Xi He, Gan Li, Lei Zhang, Yuhe Huang, Bin Xie, Zhifang Shi, Guanghui Feng, Wenbin Liu, Fucong Lyu, Shuo Wang, Zhengrong Yu, Junhua Luan, Chunlu Zhao, Hui Lü, Xiaogang Hu, Qiang Zhu, Jian Lü
Additively manufactured mechanical metamaterials exhibit extraordinary physical and mechanical performance. However, achieving a balance between lightweight design, strength, and energy absorption remains challenging. Here, we develop a material-structure-function integrated strategy to additively manufacture lightweight metamaterials. Specifically, strong yet ductile aluminum (Al) alloy with heterogeneous grain was developed to print hero shrew–inspired damage-resistant metamaterials. The synergistic interplay between microscale strengthening and mesoscale architectural stress regulation leads to a cross-scale coordination mechanism, which effectively bridges material heterogeneities and structural hierarchy for multilevel energy dissipation. Such a strategy enables our metamaterials to maintain a stable stress platform during deformation. Hence, our metamaterials display an excellent combination of ultralightweight (0.91 ± 0.01 g/cm 3 ), high relative yield strength (17.0 ± 0.7%), and unprecedented specific energy absorption (39.1 ± 0.7 J/g), surpassing most metallic metamaterials. This facile concept expands the design space for lightweight metamaterials and demonstrates scalable strategies to realize the cross-scale coordination mechanism required by multifunction, showing transformative potential in mass production for sustainable engineering solutions.